Neuroimaging Studies of Antisocial Behaviour

Abstract

Specu la tion about the physi cal and neu roa na tomi cal aspects of crimi nal be hav iour be gan with Franz Jo seph Gall at the end of the 18th cen tury. His ob ser va tions evolved into phre nol ogy, a the ory that as signs spe cific men tal func tions to to pog raphi cal re gions of the skull (1). Un til re cently, EEG was one of our main meth ods of look ing at brain ab nor malities in cases of ag gres sive be hav iour, but the non spe cific and rela tively un lo cal ized na ture of the find ings lim ited its in terpre ta tion. Now, more than 2 cen tu ries af ter Gall, neu roi maging tech nolo gies prom ise to greatly en hance our un der stand ing of the bio logi cal un der pin nings and sub strates of an ti so cial be hav iour in a way that Gall could not even imag ine. Struc tural tech niques, such as CT or mag netic resonance im ag ing (MRI), look at brain ar chi tec ture, de tail ing size, shape, and lo ca tion of tis sue dam age. Func tional approaches, such as posi tron emis sion to mo gra phy (PET) or func tional MRI, add the di men sion of live neu ral ac tiv ity. This pa per re views im ag ing tech nol ogy as ap plied to the study of an ti so cial be hav iour. Each ap proach is sum ma rized and fol lowed by rele vant clini cal stud ies. For a more de tailed dis cus sion of the tech ni cal as pects of neu roi mag ing as sessment, the reader is re ferred else where (2,3).The ear li est im ag ing method in volved X-rays, dis cov ered in 1895. A form of elec tro mag netic ra dia tion, X-rays pro vide con trast as they at tenu ate dif fer ently, de pend ing on tis sue den sity. The soft tis sues of the brain proved to be a bar rier to use, how ever, ex cept for gross pa thol ogy due to brain displace ment. In 1918, the next de vel op ment was pneu moencepha lo gra phy (4). Here, air was in jected into the subarach noid space, fol lowed by de linea tion of ven tri cles. In 1927, an emerg ing func tional tech nique, cere bral ar te ri og raphy, was de vel oped (5). The next mile stone was Wa da's injec tions of so dium amy tal into the ca rotid ar tery to as sess lan guage lat er al ity (6). The pre-CT era was largely domi nated by an gi ogra phy. Com put er ized To mo gra phy (CT)To mo graphic im ag ing re fers to X-ray im ages of spe cific planes within the body. The digi tal com puter revo lu tion of the late 1960s made CT pos si ble. Also known as com put er ized ax ial to mo gra phy (CAT), CT was de vel oped in the early 1970s by God frey Houns field of Great Brit ain and Al len Cormack of the US. Nar row beams of X-rays sweep se quen tially across the head, re sult ing in a se ries of elec tri cal im pulses recorded by a ra dia tion de tec tor. So phis ti cated com puter software in te grates the data, us ing the ra dia tion ab sorp tion

Structural and functional MRI‐ findings in children and adolescents with antisocial behavior

“…In sum, structural and functional aberrations of the frontal-limbic structures are suggested to be associated with antisocial behavior in adult samples (for more extensive reviews see Bassarath, 2001;Blair, 2003).…”

Patterns of violent aggression-induced brain c-fos expression in male mice selected for aggressiveness

“…Prefrontal deficits were shown in intermittent explosive disorder (characterized by outbursts of anger; [56]) antisocial aggressive behavior [57], impulsive aggression (characterized by problems in emotion regulation; [58]) etc. In line with these human findings, the destruction of the orbital cortex increased aggressiveness in rats, whereas the stimulation of the prefrontal, piriform, and cingulated cortices reduced feline quiet biting induced by hypothalamic stimulation [43,59].…”

Abnormal response to emotional stimulus in male adolescents with violent behavior in China

“…They are both important for decoding emotional information and guiding goaldirected behaviors [3]. Many brain imaging studies have demonstrated functional and morphologic brain abnormalities in the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala in aggressive persons [4,5]. Aggressive behavior has been assumed to arise from an abnormal processing of affective information [6].…”